A Peaceful Eely Feeding

 by Kim Roberts

  Back before environmentalism was a movement, and before ecotourism was a business plan, divers explored the oceans without fully realizing the efforts of their actions. As a young man venturing into the waters of Maui in the early 70s, Blain Roberts and several other scuba instructors "discovered" the reality of fish feeding.

Diving four times a day, seven days a week, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year, Blain needed a little bit more excitement in his dives. As a dive guide and boat captain, he always did his best to show the guests a good time underwater, but he was feeling bored.

Idea strikes. Maybe if he took food underwater, the fish would eat it. This would create more excitement for himself and certainly for his diving patrons.

As you can imagine, this proved a rousing success. Everything from the Lau'ipala (yellow tang) to the Humuhumu nukunuku apu'a (reef triggerfish) dive-bombed the feed bag. Eventually, this was not exciting enough.

Fortunately, being a young man in his twenties, he had a vivid and active imagination. He began spearing fish and then using the spear as a fork. He fed the fish to the moray eels.

The eels loved it; the guests loved it; Blain loved it; the fish had no comment.

Over a brief period of time this too became routine. His enthusiasm for the sport and his desire for thrills escalated. He began feeding the eels by hand. He took some with him daily on the boat along with a bag of bread for the fish. The eels loved it. The fish were much happier too.

His dives became lessons in controlled carnage. Fish would dive-bomb the bag of bread: the eels would thrust themselves out of the safety of the nooks and crannies in the coral; the diving guests would stand at attention, a steady stream of exhalations filling the water. It was very exciting!

Then one day Blain had an epiphany. Not all eels have stable personalities. (No, scuba instructors are not behavioral scientists.) Some of the eels responded well to a feeding program. The definition of "responded well" meant that they gave up hunting for themselves, they came out of the coral eagerly looking for handouts, and they took those handouts without a lot of fuss. Some eels created a lot of fuss. Blain decided not to feed those eels anymore. Unfortunately, communication between eels and humans was, and still is, in the rudimentary stages of development. Translation: the crazy eels did not know that they weren't being fed anymore.

So one day Blain took a group of four young men diving at the world-famous Molokini Crater. Underwater he noticed that one of the crazy eels, Wort, was cruising along tine bottom in search of scraps. Knowing that eels have poor eyesight Blain was sure that Wort could not see them; being down-current Blain doubted that Wort could smell them; being a confident young man Blain merrily lead his divers down to the reef.

Once there, he commenced the show. A veritable herd of Ta'ape (blue-lined snapper) bombarded the bread bag. Judging by the look on the faces of the young divers, it was a good show. There was only one tiny problem. Every time Blain exhaled, one of the Ta'ape, snapped at the bubbles exhausting from his regulator. Finally, fully piqued, Blain reached up and grabbed the offending party. It was Wort!

He had swum up from the bottom, between Blain's legs, and was lying in the folds of Blain's buoyancy compensator.  Eel to human communication evolved briskly. When Blain grabbed Wort, Wort grabbed Blain (on each side of the neck).

Blain slowly began swimming up off of the bottom. Wort stuck with him for a while. Blain thinks that Wort felt discomfort at being so far away from the reef and subsequently released his grip. Blain's comfort level rose exponentially.

He turned to one of the innocent fellows and signaled the standard diver "okay." The diver considered the question and responded with a shaky horizontal wave of the hand. 

This was not good.

Blain saw a swirl of green, cloudy smoke in the water. At depth, the color red appears green. He was bleeding profusely.

Blain knew that if the eel made contact with his carotid artery, that he had only a matter of minutes to live: he wouldn't even make it to the boat. If not and he returned to the boat without completing the dive, he would have to issue at least partial refunds to the charter. Remember, Blain is a young entrepreneur. He is struggling to get his company launched.

He signaled the divers into line and they took off back to the reef.

After the dive and back on board the boat, they all reveled in the experience.

The guests even had Blain lie down on the engine hatch while they took pictures of the twin puncture wounds along each side of his neck, the anti-coagulant of the eel's saliva allowing the wounds to ooze blood well after the injury.

This marked a special moment in Blain Roberts' young life. He stopped fish feeding years before it was politically correct. He also earned the nickname, No Refund Roberts.